Monday, January 30, 2012

It is 10 minutes past midnite. Monday, 30th January just began. Two more days to go and the second month of the year, February, will come. It will be a special February this year since it will have 29 days which occurs every four years.

There are three chess tournaments held yesterday as GiLoCatur aware of. A blitz event in Tambun, Ipoh. A state selection tourney in Kota Kinabalu. An Insofar chess tournament at DATCC, Kuala Lumpur. There were two chess tournaments took place in the eastern states - Terengganu and Kelantan, on Saturday. KC2012 or Kelantan Closed was held in Machang for two days on Friday, 27th and Saturday, 28th. A secondary school in Dungun hosted a one-day chess tournament for Terengganu school pupils. GiLoCatur was wrong to mention that the Insofar combined tournament is the first national-rated tournament of the year. Actually, the tournament in Dungun called Aizek Back-2-School chess challenge will be the first one.

Isn't this a good sign for Malaysian chess?

Let's look at the number of participants.

Insofar combined tournament - 119

Limau Bali Blitz - ?

NC2012 Sabah Chess Selection - 54

Aizek Back-2-School chess challenge - 198

KC2012 - 36 + 7 + 22 + 45 + 36 = 146

In total, more than 500 participants took part in five chess events in the weekend. Two of them are national-rated as per promoted by the organizers. Rating is one of the motivation for many Malaysian chess players. Based on rating, they know whether they improve or otherwise. GiLoCatur strongly believes that it is time for the MCF or national rating to be improvised. The rating should have an ID like FIDE rating. The DOB or Date of Birth needs to be included and updated. It is important to ensure the correctness of the database like to have the Top 100 Malaysian Juniors or Top 10 Malaysian Under 12 or etc.

One good factor for Malaysian chess progress is more and more chess tournaments are covered and published on the net. The pairings and results are published in chess-results.com. Thus, all the Malaysian chess enthusiasts are able to know who are the winners. GiLoCatur strongly believes that the Malaysian chess will keep progressing and improving. And chess tournaments will be held almost on every weekend. The big challenge is to attract more and more people to play chess.

It is interesting to note that Abang Bro could not be among the Top 10 in the final ranking even though he is the top seed. He lost only twice to Dr Zaidan and Sumant, the eventual champion. It is also interesting to note that two 1500-rated player won the final two slots. One of them is Jonathan Augustine, a player to watch for GiLoCatur. He has been participating in many local chess tournaments lately and performed quite well. He beat Camilia Johari and Abdul Haq in this tournament. If Jonathan maintains his well performance like this he may rise to the top and improves his rating.

It is also interesting to note that no woman or girl player among the Top 10 Final Ranking. The absence of several top women players like the Azman Hisham sisters - WCM Nur Nabila & WFM Nur Najiha, the Puteri siblings - Rifqah & Munajjah, and WNMs - Alia, Li Ting, Nisa' and Mi Yen, just to name a few, weakens the women challenge.

Congratulation to one of GiLoCatur's buddies, Ng6 for his quite-well performance after scoring 5/7 points. Go to his blog here to see the tourney's photo galleries. All below photos are taken from his blog. (Ng6, mohon izin guna pakai gambor2 kome ya! he he he )

GiLoCatur's chess buddy, Ng6

The champion, Sumant Subramaniam (below picture) came with his father and siblings to the tournament. His younger brother, Shreyes, performed quite well with 4 wins, 2 draws and 1 defeat scoring 5/7 points. Syabas and tahniah to Sumant.

Sumant

Bravo and salute to Mr Zaki Mat Yeop, an active chess organizer and chess player. Hopefully, he will keep organizing more and more chess tourneys. Kudos to Stonemaster, another active chess organizer, too for promoting and marketing well the event.